2/1/2020
Today was one of the most interesting of my trip so far. After getting up and having lunch at CiCi’s Pizza I checked out a local game shop, still didn’t find what I’m looking for, then went to The National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. The museum was so interesting. It had exhibits on both wartime and civilian uses of nuclear energy. It started with the Chicago pile in the 30’s, to the Manhattan Project, WW2, Cold War, to modern day. They had a representation of the lab in Chicago where fission was first produced, bomb casings of they types dropped on Japan, a bunch of different examples of missiles and bombs developed in the 50’s to the 80’s.
After that it went to the civilian purposes for nuclear energy. They had tons of information on different power plant designs and specs of the four generations of power plants and info on the different nuclear disasters. It then went onto explaining the different types of conventional and alternative power generation. It ended with an area describing the process of creating nuclear fuel rods from mining to processing, to shipping.
On the outside of the museum they had a bunch of different planes that were nuclear capable. They also had once of the Atomic Annie artillery guns, a bunch of cruise missiles, a replica of the Manhattan Project tower, bombs, and ICBM’s.
I was at the museum for 3.5 hours, until they closed. Everything was so interesting. I could’ve spent another hour or two reading everything.